This concluding chapter reflects on the book’s collected works that encapsulate, in the Aristotelian sense, gesture’s efficient causes (i.e., mechanisms that stimulate gesture) and its final causes (i.e., purposes that gesture serves). We conclude that gesture is multifunctional, operating on all levels of analysis (biological, psychological, and social levels), in all time frames (moment-to-moment, ontogenetic, and evolutionary time) and under many different discourse requirements. One over-arching theme emerges. Gesture functions simultaneously for both its producers and its observers, and thus provides a dual function that shapes thinking and language in the producer, which, in turn, shapes thinking and language in the observer – a process that underlies how we share ideas and create community.
Article outline
Gesture functions at many levels of analysis
Neurological evidence
Psychological evidence
Social evidence
Gesture functions in all time frames
Moment-to-moment
Developmental time frame
Evolutionary time frame
Methods for understanding the functions of gesture
Manipulating the presence or absence of gesture
Variation in context
Variation in task
Gesture supports speech for the producer as well as the observer
Alibali, Martha W., and Mitchell, Nathan J.2007. “Teachers’ gestures as a means of scaffolding students’ understanding: Evidence from an early algebra lesson.” Video Research in the Learning Sciences: 349–365.
Alibali, Martha, W. Flevares, Lucia, and Goldin-Meadow, Susan1997. “Assessing knowledge conveyed in gesture: Do teachers have the upper hand?”Journal of Educational Psychology 89: 183–193.
Alibali, Martha W., and Goldin-Meadow, Susan1993. “Gesture-speech mismatch and mechanisms of learning: What the hands reveal about a child's state of mind.” Cognitive Psychology 25: 468–523.
Armstrong, David F. and Wilcox, Sherman E.2007. The Gestural Origin of Language. Oxford University Press.
Church, Ruth B., and Goldin-Meadow, Susan1986. “The mismatch between gesture and speech as an index of transitional knowledge.” Cognition 23 (1): 43–71.
Chomsky, Noam1980. “Rules and representations.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1): 1–15.
Congdon, Eliza L., Novack, Miriam, Brooks, Neon, Hemani-Lopez, Naureen, O'Keefe, Lucy and Goldin-Meadow, Susan (Under review). “Better together: Simultaneous presentation of speech and gesture in math instruction supports generalization and retention.”
Cook, Susan. W., Duff, Melissa, and Goldin-Meadow, Susan (Under Review). “Rethinking memory and learning: Gesture as a vehicle for non-declarative knowledge.”
Corballis, Michael C.2003. From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language. Princeton University Press.
Edelman, Gerald M.1993. “Neural Darwinism: selection and reentrant signaling in higher brain function.” Neuron 10 (2): 115–125.
Evans, Michael A., Feenstra, Eliot, Ryon, Emily and McNeill, David2011. “A Multimodal approach to coding discourse: Collaboration, distributed cognition, and geometric reasoning."International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 6 (2): 253–278.
Fodor, Jerry A.1983. The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. MIT Press.
Gallese, Vittorio and Goldman, Alvin. 1998. “Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2, no. 12: 493–501.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan2003. Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think. Cambridge, M.A.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan, Wagner, Susan C., and Mitchell, Zachary, A.2009. “Gesturing gives children new ideas about math.” Psychological Science 20, no. 3: 267–272.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan2015. “Gesture as a window onto communicative abilities: Implications for diagnosis and intervention.” SIG 1 Perspectives on Language Learning and Education22: 50–60.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan, Wein, Debra and Chang, Cecilia1992. “Assessing knowledge through gesture: Using children's hands to read their minds.” Cognition and Instruction 9 (3): 201–219.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan, and Sandhofer, Catherine M.1999. “Gestures convey substantive information about a child’s thoughts to ordinary listeners.” Developmental Science 2 (1): 67–74.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan and McNeill, David1999. “The role of gesture and mimetic representation in making language the province of speech.” In The Descent of Mind, Michael C. Corballis & Stephen Lea (eds), 155–172. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan, and Singer, Melissa2003. “From children's hands to adults' ears: Gesture's role in the learning process.” Developmental Psychology 39 (3): 509.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan, Nusbaum, Howard, Kelly, Spencer, and Wagner, Susan2001. “Explaining math: Gesturing lightens the load.” Psychological Science 12: 516–522.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan, McClintock, Martha K., and Wimsatt, William C.2004. “Solving psychological problems in four dimensions: Heuristics for integrating the social and biological sciences.” Manuscript, University of Chicago.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan2014. “How gesture helps children learn language.” In Language in Interaction: Studies in Honor of Eve V. Clark, I. Arnon, M. Tice, C. Kurumada, & B. Estigarribia (eds), 157–171. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hostetter, Autumn B., and Alibali, Martha W.2008. “Visible embodiment: Gestures as simulated action.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15 (3): 495–514.
Iacoboni, Marco2009. “Imitation, empathy, and mirror neurons.” Annual Review of Psychology 60: 653–670.
Kelly, Spencer D., Kravitz, Corinne and Hopkins, Michael2004. “Neural correlates of bimodal speech and gesture comprehension.” Brain and Language 89 (1): 253–260.
Kelly, Spencer D., and Church, Ruth B.1997. “Can children detect conceptual information conveyed through other children's nonverbal behavior's.” Cognition and Instruction 15 (1): 107–134.
Kelly, Spencer D., and Church, Ruth B.1998. “A comparison between children' and adults' ability to detect conceptual information conveyed through representational gestures.” Child Development 69 (1): 85–93.
Kendon, Adam1994. “Do gestures communicate?: A review.” Research on Language and Social Interaction27: 175–200.
Krauss, Robert M.1998. “Why do we gesture when we speak?”Current Directions in Psychological Science 7: 54–59.
Kutas, Marta, Timothy E. Lindamood, and Steven A. Hillyard. 1984. “Word expectancy and event-related brain potentials during sentence processing.” Preparatory states and processes (1984): 217–237.
Kutas, Marta, and Hillyard, Steven A.1980. “Event-related brain potentials to semantically inappropriate and surprisingly large words.” Biological Psychology 11 (2): 99–116.
McNeill, David, Bertenthal, Bennett, Cole, Jonathon and Gallagher, Shaun2005. “Gesture-first, but no gestures?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (2): 138–139.
Mol, Lisette, and Kita, Sotaro2012. “Gesture structure affects syntactic structure in speech.” In Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 761–766.
Novack, Miriam A. and Goldin-Meadow, Susan 2017. “Gesture as representational action: A paper about function.” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
Novack, Miriam A., Elizabeth M. Wakefield, and Susan Goldin-Meadow2016. “What makes a movement a gesture?.” Cognition 146 : 339–348.
Novack, Miriam A., Congdon, Eliza L., Hemani-Lopez, Naureen, and Goldin-Meadow, Susan2014. “From action to abstraction: Using the hands to learn math.” Psychological Science 25 (4): 903–910.
Núñez, Rafael, and Lakoff, George2005. “The Cognitive Foundations of Mathematics.” Handbook of Mathematical Cognition: 109–124.
Overton, Willis F.1994. “The arrow of time and the cycle of time: Concepts of change, cognition, and embodiment.” Psychological Inquiry 5 (3): 215–237.
Özçalışkan, Şeyda, Lucero, Ché and Goldin-Meadow, Susan2016a. “Is seeing gesture necessary to gesture like a native speaker?”Psychological Science,
Ozcaliskan, Seyda, Lucero, Ché. and Goldin-Meadow, Susan2016b. “Does language shape silent gesture?”Cognition 148: 10–18,
Piaget, Jean, and Bärbel Inhelder1969. The Psychology of the Child. Basic Books.
Ping, Raedy, and Goldin-Meadow, Susan2010. “Gesturing saves cognitive resources when talking about non-present objects.” Cognitive Science 34 (4): 602–619.
Shanley, Allen, Özyürek, Asli, Kita, Sotaro, Brown, Amanda, Furman, Reyhan, Ishizuka, Tomoko, and Fujii, Mihoko2007. “Relations between syntactic encoding and co-speech gestures: Implications for a model of speech and gesture production.” Language and Cognitive Processes 22 (8):1212–1236.
Siegler, Robert S., and Crowley, Kevin1991. “The microgenetic method: A direct means for studying cognitive development.” American Psychologist 46 (6): 606–620. http://dx.doi.org/
Singer, Melissa A., and Goldin-Meadow, Susan2005. “Children learn when their teacher's gestures and speech differ.” Psychological Science 16 (2): 85–89.
Tinbergen, Niko1963. “On aims and methods of ethology.” Zeitschrift fürTierpsychologie, 20: 410–433.
Tomasello, Michael and Tomasello, Michael2009. Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Harvard University Press.
Wagner, Susan, Nusbaum, Howard, and Goldin-Meadow, Susan2004. “Probing the mental representation of gesture: Is handwaving spatial?”Journal of Memory and Language 50: 395–407.
Vygotsky, Lev1978. “Interaction between learning and development.” Readings on the Development of Children 23 (3): 34–41.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Huang, Wen, Candace Walkington & Mitchell J. Nathan
2023. Coordinating modalities of mathematical collaboration in shared VR environments. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 18:2 ► pp. 163 ff.
2023. Understanding young children’s science learning through embodied communication within an MR environment. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 18:2 ► pp. 231 ff.
Mlakar, Izidor, Matej Rojc, Darinka Verdonik & Simona Majhenič
2021. Can Turn-Taking Highlight the Nature of Non-Verbal Behavior: A Case Study. In Types of Nonverbal Communication [Working Title],
Mlakar, Izidor, Darinka Verdonik, Simona Majhenič & Matej Rojc
2019. Towards Pragmatic Understanding of Conversational Intent: A Multimodal Annotation Approach to Multiparty Informal Interaction – The EVA Corpus. In Statistical Language and Speech Processing [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 11816], ► pp. 19 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.